Composition and painting plein air

Do you have trouble choosing what to paint when working out doors?

You need to carefully decide on the composition of your work as you have so much more to choose from than you would if you were using a photograph.

You need to be quite disciplined!

Try following these simple ideas to help you choose what to keep and what to discard.
Use a view finder it makes the task a whole lot easier.
• Look through the view finder using it as the initial tool then take the same view with your camera.

• Now hold the cardboard viewfinder up like a picture frame. Look through it, moving it across the scene and decide where the best composition is.

• Keep in mind all along the focal point that you wish to include and place this focal point in the correct position in your frame as this often determines the format of your picture i.e. whether to use a landscape or portrait format.

Hope that helps you start your year out right with some good compositions.Let Gill help you compose the best bush landscape on one of her
Painting Holidays

PAINTING TIP NO.01-2009

Although landscape painting is generally divided into a simple thirds; sky, middle distance and foreground, this may sometimes change. If you wish to make the painting mainly about the sky, as it may be very dramatic, sky will take up two thirds of the format and thereby minimize the importance of the foreground. But the thirds formula is still being used.

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